Believe’t not lightly—though I go alone,
Like to a lonely dragon, that his fen
Makes fear’d and talk’d of more than seen—your son
Will or exceed the common or be caught
With cautelous baits and practice.
(iV. i. 27.)
It was not cautelous baits and practice that he would have to fear, but the open violence of Aufidius if he already thought of going to Antium, and the simile of the lonely dragon more talked of than seen would be abundantly inappropriate if it referred to his reappearance at the head of the Volscian forces: but the expressions would be quite apt if he meant to make his name redoubtable by his single prowess in strange places amidst the risks of an errant life. It is in professed anticipation of this that he rejects the companionship which Cominius offers:
Thou hast years upon thee; and thou art too full
Of the wars’ surfeits, to go rove with one
That’s yet unbruised.